WOMEN representing the 14 constituencies in Malaita last Wednesday met with eight of the MPs from the province.

This was during a dialogue UN Women facilitated to allow the women leaders in Malaita to meet and express their views to the MPs.

The dialogue aims to highlight the issues and concerns of women in Malaita to ensure influence, information and resources are targeted at women’s empowerment and development initiatives

During the meeting, which Prime Minister Rick Hou attended, the women shared their recommendations on key provincial priorities that affect development and peace.

They drew on experiences in their communities to suggest policy interventions.

They also addressed the outcome areas, which include improved women’s access to land, water and sanitation; improved economic status of women; and building peaceful communities and acknowledging women’s role in peacebuilding and the preservation of cultural identity.

One of the women participants is Janet Ramo, who is currently the President of the Auki Market Vendors Association.

“I see this national dialogue as a step forward for a prosperous Malaita,” Mrs Ramo uttered at the end of the dialogue.

“It has brought us face-to-face with our MPs to urge them to hear the concerns of women from the grassroots.

“It is a positive and direct approach for them to seriously consider the needs of women in the rural areas.”

Malaita currently does not have a woman representative in parliament.

So the dialogue is a significant event, and perhaps the first to have been organised.

It’s good to note that the women have used the occasion to share their views on issues they felt the MPs should attend to and address.

More often than not, women’s views are simply ismissed or neglected when it comes to developing our provinces and nation.

So it’s great to know eight of the 14 MPs in Malaita have spared their time to attend the dialogue and listen to the women.

The question now is what’s next?

What are the MPs going to do about the useful suggestions and recommendations that the women shared?

Are they going to act on them or just forget about?

Perhaps our national leaders need to be reminded of the words of Rose Liata, Malaita’s minister for Women, Youth and Sport.

In her presentation to the dialogue, Mrs Liata said:

“Investing in women’s empowerment is vital to improving the wellbeing of families and communities as well as achieving gender equality.

“This means that strategies must recognize the need for women and men to work together to address attitudinal and institutional barriers to women’s empowerment and development.”

That’s according to Solomon Islands Football Federation (SIFF) president William Lai.

He stated this in an interview with Radio Australia this week.

Mr Lai’s description of Solomon Islands as a “football nation” was based on crowd attendance of regional matches at Lawson Tama.

For instance, crowds of up to 12,000 and more have turned up at Lawson Tama to watch the OFC Champions League group-stage matches last week.

This is compared to as little as just 50 people showing up to watch the matches played at Trusts Arena in Auckland, New Zealand.

Of the other two hosts, Vanuatu fared quite better with crowds of around 1,000 up to 4,000 fans, while the largest crowd to watch the Tahiti games according to OFC attendance figures was 1,507.

Mr Lai says Solomon Islands is good for Oceania football because when teams from the region come to Honiara, they would play before thousands of enthusiastic fans who would make the visiting teams feel their game is appreciated.

He says the OFC should therefore let Solomon Islands host more regional soccer tournaments instead of teams playing in empty stadiums.

Mr Lai is absolutely right.

But before he brings more OFC matches to Lawson Tama, we need to rebuild the national stadium.

It’s a shame really that our national soccer stadium, Lawson Tama, remains in the same old state as it were 20 years ago.

While everything else is moving forward, Lawson Tama has not.

It was the same old Lawson Tama many of you would have seen and known in your teens.

Our soccer has gone through some stages of development, but Lawson Tama remained as it were.

Why do we neglect Lawson Tama?

Isn’t Lawson Tama our national stadium?

If it is so, why don’t we commit to building it into something we can all take pride in?

Our Pacific neighbours are far well ahead in developing their national sports stadiums, while we continue to make do with our old rugged Lawson Tama.

If Mr Lai wants to see the crowd attendance at Lawson rise to 30,000, he needs to take the lead to rebuild the stadium.

It is undisputed that we are a soccer-loving nation.

More people would want to attend soccer matches at Lawson. But they are unable to do so due to the current state of the stadium.

We may be a leading football nation in Oceania.

But what difference does this bring if Lawson Tama remained in its current state?

His Excellency Major-General (Ret’d) Jioji Konusi Konrote, President of the Republic of Fiji and USP Chancellor officially launched the University’s 50th Anniversary at its Laucala Campus in Suva, Fiji.

And it was highlighted the past fifty (50) years have been a period of tremendous change for USP and the young people today enjoy more opportunity in education than ever before in our history.

THE University of the South Pacific has a series of events earmarked for the year to commemorate its 50th anniversary.

On Monday, celebrations were launched with an opening of a time capsule containing important documents and letters from the university students and management in 1997.

Other events planned out for the year include memorials, travelling exhibitions, seminar series, library focus weeks, open days, quiz nights, and conferences and dinners.

As one of the members of the university, Solomon Islands has benefited alot through the educational programs being offered by the University.

Each year we have hundreds of our students undertaking studies via USP, both in the country and at a number of USP campuses around the pacific.

Currently the three of the main campuses are based in Laucala, Suva, Fiji, Alafua in Samoa and Emalus in Vanuatu. And we have students studying there.

There also mini-campuses in most of the regional member countries.

As part of USP’s expansion program, the next and fourth campus will be established in Honiara.

Ground-works are expected to start this year at the proposed site at the King George Sixth area, East Honiara.

The importance of having USP’s fourth campus here cannot be further stated.

Its important for Honiara to host this campus, given the increasing of enrollment by local students.

Solomon Islands recorded the second highest number of students at USP. Most of them travel out each year to Fiji to study.

The government expends a huge chunk of its education budget to send the students abroad.

Having the campus here would be a great saving for the nation. That saving could be used to educate more of our children right on our own turf.

An university campus here would also mean greater access and opportunities for those who want to attain tertiary level education.

THE talk over the last few days has been on a movement in Malaita that called themselves “Message of the Kingdom”.

This group existed as a church for many years.

But public attention turned on them in recent days after the group’s leader, who some have described as a “self-claimed prophet”, made outrageous predictions that are too good to be true.

Amongst his predictions is “the opening of the earth on 16 January 2018 and that all unbelievers will fall into that big opening”.

January 16 came yesterday and nothing happens.

The group’s rise and the recent behaviour of its leader carry all the hallmarks of a cult.

And that’s what this so-called “Message of the Kingdom” really is.

They are a cult.

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who once taught at Harvard Medical School in the US, wrote a paper titled Cult Formation in the early 1980s.

He delineated three primary characteristics, which are the most common features shared by destructive cults.

A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power. That is a living leader, who has no meaningful accountability and becomes the single most defining element of the group and its source of power and authority.

A process [of indoctrination or education is in use that can be seen as] coercive persuasion or thought reform [commonly called "brainwashing"].

The culmination of this process can be seen by members of the group often doing things that are not in their own best interest, but consistently in the best interest of the group and its leader.

Lifton's seminal book Thought Reform and Psychology of Totalism explains this process in considerable detail.

Economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.

The destructiveness of groups called cults varies by degree, from labour violations, child abuse, medical neglect to, in some extreme and isolated situations, calls for violence or mass suicide.

Reports from Malaita in recent days claimed some members of “Message of the Kingdom” gave away their valuables in preparation for the predicted January 16 event.

Let’s not believe anything this group and its leader, or leaders, talk about.

They are a cult and cults always made outrageous claims and predictions.

The police however, must keep a closer eye of such groups.

Around the world, cult leaders whose predictions failed often resorted to violence or mass suicide.